


A Kinder Fiction

by MalecCrazedAuthor



Series: A Series of Completely Not Awkward Encounters [3]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Angst, Awkwardness, First Date, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 17:30:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6816793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalecCrazedAuthor/pseuds/MalecCrazedAuthor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Magnus drops a cheeky wink. “Oh, I’m sure she had her theories, but rather than leave it to chance, I made certain to inform her that you were sprawled out naked on my bed, sleeping the sleep of the well and truly post-coital.”</p><p>Alec chokes on spit and his face ignites. “What?” He gawks at Magnus, his eyes watering as he coughs.</p><p>Grin broadening, Magnus leans closer, his voice dropping to a timbre that settles somewhere south of Alec’s navel. “Should I have told her the truth?” he purrs. The effect of his tone is so far opposite that of his words that Alec isn’t sure he won’t simply melt down in sheer bewilderment. “Imagine her crushing disappointment if she thought you spent our first date snoring on my couch.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Kinder Fiction

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place a few hours after "Tongue-Tied"

When he first opens his eyes, Alec isn’t sure where he is. But the unique amalgamation of renovated industrial space meets old-world bordello quickly places him in Magnus’s loft.

On the sofa. Where he passed out after Magnus fixed him a drink. A glimpse at the end-table shows the glass still sitting there, almost untouched.

Alec twists when he hears a rustle behind him. Magnus is standing at a bookshelf he doesn’t recall being there before, filling it with tomes from a sizeable stack against the wall. Alec squints at them.

“Didn’t I see some of those at Camille’s apartment?”

“Ah, you’re awake!” Magnus deposits the book he’s holding with a flourish and turns to smile at him. He moves with a fluttery, bustling sort of energy that Alec is beginning to suspect happens only when Magnus is trying too hard to keep things light. “And yes. At one time I had left a sizeable portion of my library with Camille and then never reclaimed them because I kept putting off the distasteful task of dealing with her. But since she appears to have flitted off to parts unknown to avoid Raphael as well as whatever unpleasantness Valentine might have in store for us, I figured now was the best opportunity I’d have to get them back. Did you rest well?”

Magnus tosses the question out easily, returning his attention to cataloging books. Nonetheless, Alec feels his face beginning to heat. This was not how he wanted their first date to go. “I—I didn’t mean to—What was in that drink?”

“The drink you barely touched?” Magnus chuckles. “It’s less the contents of the drink than the fact that I got you to sit down to drink it. You were operating much like a bicycle.”

Alec gives him a narrow look. “If this is leading to an innuendo, I’m not sure I want to know.”

“Tempting, but too easy.” Magnus’s grin sparkles brighter than all his jewelry. “No, the punchline is just that you could remain upright only so long as you were still in motion.” His smile fades and he leans a shoulder against the bookshelf. The casual pose is just the smallest bit too contrived; Alec has started to see, now, how often Magnus disguises concern behind a blithe façade. “Had I known just how exhausted you were, I might have insisted you stay home and rest.”

Alec sighs and hangs his head, checking his pockets. “Right. Yeah. It’s been—” He breaks off, patting harder when his search comes up empty, an edge of worry creeping in.

“Looking for this?” Magnus waggles his phone in front of him and Alec blinks in surprise, not only at its appearance but at Magnus’s sudden nearness. “Your sister called twice, once to say she and Clary Fairchild were tracking down a possible lead and that she would follow up with you to let you know if it panned out, and then again to inform you that no, it had not.”

Alec takes the phone and sighs, his shoulders slumping. “Damn. Wait. She didn’t wonder why you were answering my phone?”

Magnus drops a cheeky wink. “Oh, I’m sure she had her theories, but rather than leave it to chance, I made certain to inform her that you were sprawled out naked on my bed, sleeping the sleep of the well and truly post-coital.”

Alec chokes on spit and his face ignites. “ _ What _ ?” He gawks at Magnus, his eyes watering as he coughs.

Grin broadening, Magnus leans closer, his voice dropping to a timbre that settles somewhere south of Alec’s navel. “Should I have told her the truth?” he purrs. The effect of his tone is so far opposite that of his words that Alec isn’t sure he won’t simply melt down in sheer bewilderment. “Imagine her crushing disappointment if she thought you spent our first date snoring on my couch.”

Torn between crawling under the sofa cushions in mortification and taking advantage of the fact that Magnus is so damned close, Alec slumps against the back of the sofa, closes his eyes, and groans. “Oh God. I’m so,  _ so _ sorry…”

Magnus continues as though he doesn’t hear the apology, and his voice is so close to Alec’s ear that every nerve ending on that side of his body lights up. “Of course, I’m not entirely certain she believed me. We may have to brainstorm some form of evidence to offer. Souvlaki?”

Alec’s brain stumbles, trying to follow the non-sequitur while simultaneously offering a number of uncensored suggestions relating to the concept of “evidence.” Consequently, words abandon him, leaving him stammering. It happens frequently enough in Magnus’s presence as to be humiliatingly commonplace.

“S-sorry, what?”

A slow smile curls Magnus’s shimmery lips and his eyes twinkle with a humor than Alec suspects would seem mocking on anyone else, but on Magnus it’s just gentle and understanding and  _ fun _ . “I took the liberty of ordering in, since it seemed like there was a chance we wouldn’t make it to dinner after all. Are you hungry?”

Alec can’t help but smile back. “Yeah, I guess I am. Izzy’s been trying to cook more than usual lately. I think she’s trying to figure out the concept of comfort food.”

Magnus beams and he offers Alec a hand to pull him off the sofa. He accepts without thinking, then grunts as muscles that stiffened during his nap protest.

“Tough patrol last night?” Magnus asks, his head tipping to the side and his eyes narrowing a little as he scans Alec for hints of injury.

“Not exactly.” Alec sighs ruefully, rubbing his ribs as he follows Magnus into the kitchen. “Ever heard the old saying about the most dangerous opponent being the untrained one?”

Magnus’s soft chuckle is almost musical, the mellow, resonant low register of a xylophone gently thrumming along Alec’s spine until the sound finds a home somewhere beneath his sternum. “Ah. Been sparring with the newest addition to your merry Nephilim tribe, I take it?”

“Well, someone has to. Izzy insists that I do it, supposedly because Clary has to learn to fight things that are bigger than she is.” He smiles wryly and takes a seat on a stool at a breakfast bar as Magnus dishes up food for them both. “I don’t buy it. Either she’s trying to avoid injury herself, or she’s trying to broker peace. Good luck with that. We have a common goal now. That doesn’t make us friends.”

There’s something deceptively bland about Magnus’s regard. Alec might have fallen for it if he hadn’t been one the receiving end of a similar stare from Lydia just a few hours ago. “What?”

“Nothing. Nothing.” Magnus shakes himself and sets a plate before Alec, conjuring two glasses of wine into being in front of them before hitching himself up onto the other stool. “I just find this tension between you and Clary curious. The two of you have so much in common.”

“Aside from Jace?” Alec gives him a dubious look.

Magnus’s face tightens for a fraction of a second, then smoothes over. Perhaps their first date isn’t a great time to remind him that there’s a small (and continually shrinking) part of Alec still trying to let go of the infatuation he’d nurtured for his  _ parabatai _ for years. He’s starting to see how ridiculous it was, and that it was mostly born out of a naive belief that life would always be just Alec and Izzy and Jace, together. Other people might come and go on the fringes of that dynamic, but they would never penetrate the center and disrupt it. That made Jace the object of Alec’s yearning by default.

It was a stupid, childish way of thinking...but it’s also hard to let go of something that habitual and deeply ingrained.

Alec clears his throat and moves past that. “I don’t see that we have anything in common, and I don’t think I’d want to. I mean, okay, I guess it’s not  _ totally _ her fault that she turned absolutely everything upside down from the moment we came across her, but God, it’s been exhausting and she’s just so damned oblivious to what she’s doing to anyone else when she’s got her mind set on something.”

Silence falls for a thoughtful moment.

“What I was actually referring to is your passionate, all-consuming devotion to family.” Magnus’s bright voice has become somewhat muted. “And personally, I don’t think Clary is oblivious at all. She knows very well what she’s done, but she’s had no more choice than you would have in the same situation. Imagine if it had been Isabelle who disappeared the way Jocelyn did. Whose tidy apple-cart of a life would you have scrupled to upset in your quest to get her back?”

The few bites he’s managed to eat settle uncomfortably in Alec’s stomach and he finds himself twiddling idly with a denuded skewer. The tender lamb he slid off it is no longer very flavorful. The harsh words he’s spoken about Clary—even to the point of calling her manhunt for her mother a  _ pointless crusade _ —don’t sit very well with him when considered in that light. If anyone ever described a hypothetical search for someone Alec loved in such a dismissive way, much less tried to impede Alec’s attempts to find them, he would put them head-first through a wall.

The wave of irritation with himself that swells up and threatens to drown Alec comes as a surprise. It strikes him like a blow, how wrong-headed he’s been lately about so very many things.

What is he doing here? Why does Magnus even want him here? He’s tight-assed and judgmental and he comes from a long line of bigots in a culture full of bigots and he knows now that he has not been entirely immune to the influence of that upbringing. He can barely string together three words in Magnus’s presence, and when he’s managed it, they’ve most often been harsh rebuffs of affectionate overtures. And the rest of the time they’ve been outpourings of concern for the other guy he’s still partially hung-up on.

And then, just to complete his image as a total clod, he goes and falls asleep barely minutes into their first date.

About the only flaw Alec can no longer bludgeon himself with is the cowardice of still being closeted. He wishes he could reclaim the surety he felt in those few instants between striding away from the altar and the completion of the kiss he’d laid on Magnus there in front of everyone. The righteous self-assurance that had led to him looking his parents squarely in the eye and telling them he was going to be with Magnus and they’d better get used to the idea.

He’d liked that version of himself. He wants to figure out how to find that guy again.

Magnus hasn’t spoken again. He’s leaving Alec alone with his thoughts. Not pushing. Waiting for him to process this new perspective.

“Why haven’t you given up on me?” Alec blurts. It sounds pathetic. Like he’s fishing for compliments or reassurance. But he needs to know. “The way I treated you… Some of the things I said… I mean, you tell me how longs it’s been and then you keep putting yourself out there for me and then I accuse you of.. I-I… What I’m saying is, I know it’s not a game to you. That was unfair. And I’m sorry.”

Magnus smiles that sympathetic smile. Glittery and charming, but with an underside of tenderness that Alec feels like a hug. A smile that says Magnus knows all about mistakes because he’s probably made every one that can be made at least twice over, and it’s okay.

“No one is just their confusion or resentment or fear or angst,” he says, his words gentle despite the lightness in his tone. “People have layers.”

Alec squints at him. “You planning to try to tell me Freud said that, too?”

“No, that philosophy is courtesy of an ogre named Shrek.”

Alec blinks, then shakes his head with wry amusement as Magnus grins.

“And there’s the other reason.” Magnus’s hand is as warm as his eyes when it settles along Alec’s jaw, his thumb brushing Alec’s bottom lip where it’s drawn up into a helpless smile. “Like the sun peeking out between clouds on a stormy day.”

Maybe Alec can’t quite seize onto the courage that drove him back down that aisle to plant that desperate kiss on Magnus the first time, but he doesn’t need it. All he needs to do is follow the invitation in that hand back to the person it’s attached to and lay claim to the kiss that’s waiting for him when he arrives.

It’s not quite as terrifying this time, but no less exhilarating. What follows is a long moment filled with breathy gasps and soft moans, of bodies moving unconsciously closer to one another, seeking hands transitioning to encircling arms, fabric rubbing on fabric and fingers carding through silky hair.

When they part, Alec’s heart is knocking hard against his ribs and Magnus’s breath gusts shallowly against his neck. His lips seek Magnus’s jaw like they’re pulled there by gravity, and he slurs his next words against skin that smells like aftershave and herbs.

“So, out of curiosity? Just what were you thinking when you mentioned ‘evidence’...?”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me at [maleccrazedauthor.tumblr.com](http://maleccrazedauthor.tumblr.com).


End file.
